Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2021

Publication Title

Journal of Bioterrorism & Biodefense

Volume

12

Issue

1

Pages

jbtbd-21-24285

Abstract

This article presents a global prioritization methodology that evaluates the relative risks of non-state actor acquisition of materials that could be used in chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and high explosive Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) from the country's relevant infrastructure. Prioritization is based on three domains: 1. Assessing relative scale of materials in each country, 2. The country's corresponding security posture, and 3. The presence of threat actors. The output is a list of countries prioritized from greatest risk to least. Rather than providing an overall 1 to N ranking, however, the results are placed into tiers based upon their natural groupings within the three domains. The countries in the highest tiers are flagged as potential US national security concern; those scoring in the middle and at the bottom are flagged as posing lower US national security concern. A systematic approach assesses each country by leveraging many disciplines, such as risk and decision analysis, as well as expert judgement. A quantitative value model based on Multi-Attribute Value Theory (MAVT) organizes the objectives scoring criteria into a value tree using lessons learned from previous studies, published literature, and expert judgement. The article presents the prioritization categories and corresponding value model scoring criteria to include measurement type, weight, range, and value preference. Country names and data are notional in order to share the details on the underlying methodology and model without identification of actual security risks. A deliberative process addresses factors external to the model and scrutinizes inputs, methodology, model, and results.

Rights

© 2021 Susan Caskey and Barry Ezell.

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Comments

On the publisher web site, this article is misfiled into Volume 12, Issue 5. The publisher landing page is available at: https://www.omicsonline.org/peer-reviewed/prioritizing-countries-by-concern-regarding-access-to-weapons-of-massdestruction-materials-117218.html.

Citation will link to OSTI webpage.

Original Publication Citation

Caskey, S., & Ezell, B. (2021). Prioritizing countries by concern regarding access to weapons of mass destruction materials. Journal of Bioterrorism & Biodefense, 12(1), jbtbd-21-24285. https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1831169

ORCID

0000-0003-4274-908X (Ezell)

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